Does 50/50 ad revenue sharing on social media sound impossible? For Chris Emme, Chief Revenue Officer at Tsu, Inc., it’s the norm. Chris Emme talks with host Christopher Smith about Tsu, a new startup that’s helping content creators get the most out of social media, with a platform that reflects the symbiotic relationship between social media platforms and their most influential users. So, you should not ignore The power of social media.
When social media started, we were just trying to connect the world. Then we thought about how we could use it to maximize distribution of things like news, media, products, and services. But according to Chris, Social Media 3.0 is all about commercializing content creation – and developing a more democratic model for platforms to share revenue with their creators. It’s all about using social media effectively – and that starts from the top down.
Chris also shares some important lessons he’s learned about resilience, mentorship, and leadership in sales. His primary takeaway? Make it personal, make it real, and meet people where they’re at. If you can take a personal approach and walk in your customer’s shoes, you are already ten steps closer to success than most of your competitors.
Watch or listen to this episode The power of social media
Transcript
Wed, 12/16 12:57PM • 48:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales, salesperson, people, client, crm, outcomes, prospecting, activity, tsu, business, generally, career, important, linkedin, post, helping, organization, content, impromptu, oftentimes
Speakers of the discussion about The power of social media
Chris Emme, Christopher Smith
Intro
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog Podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes.
Christopher Smith 08:29
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog! Today we have joining us Chris Emme. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Emme 08:34
Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here.
Christopher Smith 08:36
Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
Chris Emme 08:39
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m the Chief Revenue Officer. I’ve been in sales my entire career, and about a year ago, I had connected with a group of investors who had, who had just purchased and just began spinning up this social media platform technology called Tsu. Very quickly after having met the CEO I realized that this was something that was not only just needed in the marketplace, but was also very timely. As I’m sure you and your listeners are aware, social media has become incredibly important in the ecosystem of how people communicate, you should not ignore The power of social media, how news gets news and information gets disseminated. But the other thing that was a really important phenomenon is that we’ve now emerged into sort of social media 3.0, which is the professionalization of content creators, or the professionalization of influencers. You know, social media 1.0 was how do you connect the world right how do you connect reconnect with with old friends and kindergarten teachers and how do you, how do you sort of stay connected with your circle of friends. The next iteration was, was mass distribution. You saw news outlets, you saw people, you saw brands that were using social media as a way to get their messages out to the masses, because it really was adopted by billions of people across the world. This next iteration of which we’re on the threshold of is that content creators out there those that are, you know, creating content on YouTube, or your funny memes on Twitter, or, or short form content. They’re looking at social media, not only as distribution but as a way to actually commercialize their IP, or to commercialize their content. So, what Tsu is all about is that we’re a social media platform. And it’s a very similar model to sort of an Instagram or a Facebook or a Twitter where you know you’ve got a feed of content, people can post things onto their profile, you’re aggregating followers and friends, and we’re monetizing our platform through ads, just the same way that they are on other social media platforms. The difference is, is that we are actually revenue sharing so the the revenue that we generate from the ads, we are actually paying back in a 50/50 revenue share with the content creators who are posting that content. And it’s a, it’s a simple principle based on fairness, that, that content creators or influencers and I use that term to encompass the, the large enormous content creators out there, artists and athletes, and professional content creators, all the way down to the small micro-influencer who is, you know, taking pictures of landscapes, or, or, or creating video content about healthy cooking recipes and they and they have, you know, 500 to 1000, people that they, they distribute that content to. So it sort of runs the gamut completely and so we we’ve democratized that so that everyone regardless of your size is able to monetize your IP like your your actual content that you spend money and you spend time you spend resources developing, so.
Christopher Smith 12:07
It’s a great incentive for everyone to get involved with social media.
Chris Emme 12:10
That’s right, that’s right. And so, you know, for some people it will be an extension of careers that they’re building. I mean these are, these are artists and athletes and names that you know you see all the time and they might excel on the basketball court or the football field or in front of an audience of 100,000 people, but they also create content and they’re using social media as a vehicle to to monetize that all the way down to, you know, the, the side hustle, the person who says, “Hey listen, can I put $50 or $150 in my pocket every single month?” which you know for a lot of people around the world that makes a difference.
Christopher Smith 12:47
Oh yeah.
Chris Emme 12:48
You know, it pays for groceries, it pays for your car insurance you know and so, um, so it’s nice to be involved in an up in an organization that is sort of democratized that business on a revenue share model.
Christopher Smith 13:01
That’s terrific. That’s terrific. Thinking back over your career, tell us about the person who’s had the most impact on your success.
Chris Emme 13:13
Oh, that’s, that’s probably an easy one and it was my first boss coming out of college and so I came out of college in the late 90s, and this was sort of the beginning of the, this was the beginning of the.com boom, .com 101, and I had found a job in San Francisco, working with a digital media company, and it was my first experience in sales. It was actually a client services role. And I got a level of mentorship at a time where I needed every little nugget of wisdom to understand the business of sales. And that mentor that that boss of mine spent a lot of time making sure that I understood the context of a lot of the things that we were doing, it wasn’t just a client call but the client call had an objective or, you know, we’re going to be upselling and this is what this upsell process is going to become and, you know, I just remember, oftentimes being on a conference call and we were together in a room, and she would deliver the ask. And then she would look at me and she would just put her finger to her lips and say, “This is the time when we’re quiet, get comfortable with uncomfortable silence because this is where we’ve put the ask on the line.” And that was just something that for my entire career as I became a sales leader and potentially a mentor to other people, these were the same, the same lessons that I learned from her, I found myself repeating to, to people on my team.
Christopher Smith 14:44
When you were going through that, did you realize what a gift she was giving you?
Chris Emme 14:48
Not at all. Not at all, and, and that it’s amazing because you realize how great sales leaders are, and great mentors are when you don’t have that mentorship. And so you know what I think, both good and bad, is it was my first experience out of college, and so it’s on a trajectory that allowed me to see and reap early success in my career. But then I started to expect that from other bosses and from other mentors, and when I didn’t get it I ended up finding that I had to sort of seek it out.
Christopher Smith 15:22
Right.
Chris Emme 15:22
And that was another lesson was to sort of never be without a mentor or guide in some capacity within an organization
Christopher Smith 15:30
That’s great advice. What are the top three things that have helped you the most in your career?
Chris Emme 15:38
So I think the first one boils down to essentially just resilience. So, this is the idea that you know I hear no more often than, you know what I’ve got, I’ve got my kids who I asked to do things and they say no and I think it’s that resilience that I learned in sales that actually allowed me to be actually a better father. But you know, we face no all the time, and to be able to sort of take a moment, brush yourself off, and get back to it, that I think is one of the most, most powerful, most powerful tools that that a young salesperson can meet the other lesson was putting myself in the shoes of my client. So it’s not about what I want. It’s about what they want. And so, I even do things little tricks like I never begin sentences with the word, “I.” Right the subject of the sentence is never me it’s always, you know, “Your recent marketing campaign was really impressive. I’d love to talk to you about how we can complement that,” whatever. But it really was about being able to turn it around, do the researc,h and identify what are the probable needs of my client and adjust my approach based on what they need versus what I need. And then I think the last thing is it kind of is in line with the first one but I heard this very early on in my career, which was persistence breaks down resistance. And that goes along with the lines of resilience, and it’s not to necessarily be the annoying salesperson that just continues to call and call and call, but that it takes more than one outreach to find the angle or find the opportunity or find the nugget of information that helps you present your solution in a way that makes sense for your client. So you know that resilience of brushing yourself off, that ability to think in the shoes of your of your client, and then the opportunity to just have the willingness to kind of go after it and, and, kind of, knock on that door more than a few times.
Christopher Smith 17:50
Right, right. And do you have a third?
Chris Emme 17:53
Oh so well I was gonna say is that it was the resilience, it was the, the perspective of the client and then the,
Christopher Smith 18:00
I’m sorry. Yep.
Chris Emme 18:01
Yeah persistence.
Christopher Smith 18:02
Yeah. That’s awesome. How would you advise someone who has the goal of becoming a CRO, that’s their end goal, what’s your advice?
Chris Emme 18:13
Right, yeah so, you know obviously I think that the the sales career, the trajectory the salesperson is, is, is fairly baked, meaning that you really start your career in Client Services or some sort of inside sales role, then you get into an outside sales role, then you get into some sort of managerial role where you might be a player coach, and then you get into regional management. And so, you know, as you are moving in that career, you shift from being a salesperson who is sort of singularly focused on, on their business to to becoming actually an internal salesperson. And what I mean by that is that when I was in when I’m in sales leadership roles, my clients are my salespeople. And so what is it that I can do to make their jobs easier. What internal hurdles can I ,can I block for them, what distractions, how can I help them ideate. You know what is it that I can do, whether it’s prospecting helping them build a deck helping them, you know, with their presentation skills, what can I do to make my sales team more effective, which ultimately helps me, but you shift from being an outside salesperson also to being, almost to being an inside salesperson where you’re selling into, and you’re working with the sales people on your team. Anyway, and then sort of that, that last step is when you get into a CRO, that’s really sort of executive leadership. And so, this, that sort of that next level, I think you really have to be way more in tune with the needs of the overall business rather than simply just the sales function of the business. And it’s not just sales and marketing, but you understand how operations work, you understand how tech works, you understand how manufacturing works, you sort of need to be, you need to be a guide of the sales organizations so that they see what the company does holistically rather than simply just the selling of a product or a service.
Christopher Smith 20:24
Right, right. Tell me about your decision to pursue your first sales leadership role. What drove that?
Chris Emme 20:32
Yeah, you know I was, I was actually lucky, so I had been working in some large organizations. I’d been working at Microsoft and then I worked at Yahoo, and I had the opportunity to work at a startup, where obviously startups afford a lot of opportunity for growth. This was early in my career and I was hired as the first East Coast salesperson this was a West Coast-based technology company, so I had, I had the opportunity to build a region, you know build a reputation, hone our pitch, identify who our buyer was, identify the, the needs and the unique characteristics of a buyer that that we needed to go and sell to. And then as we were more successful as companies, as I as I was successful in my region, it became obvious that we needed to hire people. And given the fact that I had sort of laid the road, it almost became a little bit of a default where I would hire people, and then they would sort of look to me for guidance and I went from being a salesperson to a player coach to then over a three-year period to becoming sales leadership, not necessarily by default that I was the, I was the, the most tenured person there, but because I sort of evolved into that role of helping others become successful at their job. And, and that’s kind of how it kind of happened a little bit organically, rather than sort of being tapped in saying okay you’re now the boss and you lead these people. So, plus when you hire somebody you technic-, you sort of have that affinity. Right, somebody looks at you as the sort of the natural leader anyways and so there was that sort of, there was that unspoken bond that we had and then it just emerged over time so I was lucky in my, in my transition from sales to sales leadership.
Christopher Smith 22:20
Right. If you’re looking at, you know, if you’re considering position, a sales leadership position at another company, a new, a new company, what do you look for to say, “Yeah I want that job?”
Chris Emme 22:36
Yeah, you know, and I think this is sort of natural in, in career trajectories, is you kind of want more. And it’s a little bit of a curse of a salesperson, in a way is you want more. And so, what has been really alluring about this particular role and again it’s a startup where you have an opportunity to to take on more and more responsibility. But what I’ve really enjoyed about this, this role as a Chief Revenue Officer is the idea that marketing rolls into me. It’s so it’s not necessarily all brand marketing, but it’s user acquisition, its customer acquisition, its client services, its customers. So, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to hone my skills from a marketing standpoint, not that I’m the CMO but but to hone that entity a bit where you know I’m not only selling to our clients in a B2B environment but I’m also helping to procure users in a B2C environment.
Christopher Smith 23:34
Right.
Chris Emme 23:34
And so, you know, if I were to ever leave or if, or if there was another role that was out there, I would want to have the opportunity to take on a little bit more responsibility than I have right now.
Christopher Smith 23:50
Awesome. How was being a CRO, what’s that like, in, or how’s it changed for you in this era of COVID?
Chris Emme 24:01
Well, that’s a great question and I think that, you know, obviously we’re so accustomed to the world of Zoom, and we’re so accustomed to living in sort of this virtual world. The biggest challenge for me has been that I miss the, the sort of the off the cuff impromptu brainstorming sessions that tend to happen around the watercooler. Or, you know, you go up to somebody, I’m a big walker and talker, so I like to in between meetings I like to get up and I like to kind of walk around and in some cases I might be distracting people, but I like to kind of check in on people, I like that impromptu conversation or chitchat where they, meaning my team or other people in the organization, will often use that as an opportunity to, you know, clue me in on a challenge, they’re having, versus the world of zoom where everything is scheduled and there’s generally an agenda. And so, I don’t know I feel like I missed out on that impromptu conversation that ends up happening within, within an organization. So I think that’s been challenging, I think from a sales, a straight sales scenario. There’s so much you glean from an in-person relation, an in-person meeting, whether it’s the casual chitchat before the meeting or the or the conversation at the end of the meeting about what someone’s doing over the weekend or, or you know you say goodbye in the lobby or something like that. Those impromptu type conversations are awesome. times to grab nuggets of information or to solidify a relationship, and that’s a little bit of a void. You jump onto a Zoom, you have the conversation, the Zoom meeting ends, and you walk away. So I, I think it’s a challenge for salespeople nowadays, to, to, to build those relationships, both inside an organization and with your clients when you don’t have those impromptu opportunities,
Christopher Smith 25:55
Right. What’s your advice for sales leader that realizes they have problems with social media, what do I need to do to fix it? What’s your advice?
Chris Emme 26:05
Yeah, um, you know I mean I think social media is an incredibly powerful tool. When we think about Twitter and we think about LinkedIn, and we think about Facebook and Instagram and Tsu and any of these platforms is that all of them are, have their own voice. And so oftentimes in the world of business, LinkedIn becomes that that vehicle that I think a lot of people use. And so, you know, I would, I would definitely want to make sure that you understand the platform and the tone of the platform in what you’re going to say, right? So it seems to be more familiar on Facebook and Instagram versus, versus more professional on LinkedIn. I also, I also think that those that are the most successful using a platform like LinkedIn, or any other platform is a level of authenticity. Right it is like, don’t just say it to say it, don’t just post so that you have a cadence out there. There’s too much noise. And so I think that the real advice is try to be try to be poignant and valuable in your posts, rather than simply just trying to get your name across somebody’s desk, let’s say, you know.
Christopher Smith 27:21
Yeah.
Chris Emme 27:21
They’re powerful tools.
Christopher Smith 27:23
Oh yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of clutter and posting for the sake of posting that it’s a huge mistake, it really has no value. It’s got to be about value, better off doing one post a month if it’s really got some valuable content that you’re going to get a reaction out of and being able to connect with people, versus hitting them every day with something was just going to fly by them.
Chris Emme 27:44
With something right, and nowadays that the LinkedIn platform has become a little bit more of a spray and pray, I mean I think we’ve all become victim to, you know, people just sort of saying “Hey, you seem like someone I should be connected to,” or “Do you want to buy this, do you wanna buy that?” And it just, like, there’s, there’s no, they spend no time trying to get to know you and you come in, sort of an automated number to them and so I will try to avoid that, especially in a sales environment where you are trying to sell, but don’t be doing it in such an obvious way. And I think that that value-driven authentic voice is actually going to be more attractive to others than that, that force bullhorn approach.
Christopher Smith 28:23
Yeah, I got some great advice from someone that I was working with where she said, “When you’re connected or trying to engage with someone on LinkedIn, pretend like you’re at a cocktail party, and you’re talking to them build a relationship first.” You never just jump right in when you meet someone at a cocktail party, say “Let me try to sell you something,” and you start talking to like “Where are you from, you know what’s going on today,” right, you get to know the person.
Chris Emme 28:48
And I think people do want to talk about themselves and if there is a level of commonality or a connection or, or something, you’re exactly right. What brings you here to this event, how do you know David, how do you yeah build that camaraderie and then you know if if there’s at the right time, then you can then you can maybe turn it into a little bit more of a business approach. That’s great advice.
Christopher Smith 29:08
Yeah. Tell me about your success habits are there things you do every day that you’ve just built as kind of your foundation?
Chris Emme 29:16
Yeah, yeah. And I believe that as a salesperson even if your paycheck comes from a large organization that you run your own business. Right? And one of the things that is freeing about sales, but it’s it’s a double edged sword, but it’s also there’s also a pressure to it, is that nobody really tells me what to do. I mean obviously you have this overarching number or quota. And there’s an expectation of activity, generally, that that needs to happen. But ultimately, you run your own business, so if you don’t have the discipline to have a routine just like a small business owner, just like let’s say a dry cleaner. If you don’t, if you don’t open your door at 8:30 every morning and you close at 6:30 every day, how do you, how do you expect customer loyalty, right? How do you expect any sort of consistency if sometimes you’re closed, sometimes you’re open, sometimes you’re responsive? So I’m very diligent about being at my desk at 8:30 and I generally have a cup of coffee in my hand, I do a little bit of research, and what, what I do is I write the, the really important emails that I need to think about. I spend the time from 8:30 to 9:00 when nobody else is bothering me and I write those emails that need to be thought out and need to be seven sentences or less, that prospecting thing, and I want to hit send by about 8:55, because generally when people come into the office I want to be in that first tranche of emails before their day has gotten too busy. So, I do my prospecting in the morning. First thing, I’m fresh, cup of coffee, no one’s bothering me and think about those emails.
Christopher Smith 31:00
Yeah.
Chris Emme 31:00
And then generally the rest of the day gets kind of, especially in sales leadership, kind of gets taken over by other people. Your boss ends up calling and asking for a report, or you’ve got you know challenges that some of your sales people might come in, so the only time that you own is generally that early morning in that late night and I don’t like sending emails to prospects or clients late at night or later in the afternoon. So I do a lot of my outbound stuff in the morning.
Christopher Smith 31:27
As a sales leader, you have to have a way to measure success. How do you measure success for yourself and how do you measure it for your team?
Chris Emme 31:36
Right. Yeah, that’s it that’s a great question. You know, I think there’s a lot of tools out there I think there’s a lot of softwares and techniques that essentially allow you to track activity, which I think is really important. You can’t control outcomes, but you can control activity. And unfortunately in the sales organization, people are generally assessed based on the outcomes, but an outcome is not something anyone can control, what they can control is activity. So when I work with my sales team, I talk a lot about activity, whether it’s sending those emails or following up or, you know, or, or product demos, or meetings or coffees or whatever it is, whatever that whatever that activity is that generally leads to the outcomes that you want, which is the receiving end of an RFP, the submitting of a proposal, the acceptance of proposal, the renewal. So, we in sales get so focused on outcomes since that’s the basis of our jobs in our compensation, but I tend to focus a lot on the activity.
Christopher Smith 32:39
Yep. At this point, you mentioned technologies so we’re going to transition and talk a little bit about CRM. CRM: Do you love it, or do you hate it?
Chris Emme 32:51
Can I say both?
Christopher Smith 32:53
Oh yeah.
Chris Emme 32:53
Okay, good.
Christopher Smith 32:54
A lot of people do.
Chris Emme 32:55
Yeah, okay, because I’m so, so it’s really interesting as a sales person. I did not like CRM, because it became sort of a burden, right, it became a, it became a sort of a forced habit, it became a responsibility, right? And even in sales leadership, a lot of what you’re doing is you’re telling people, “Update your CRM, update your systems, I need to see the numbers, I need to see the numbers.” As I’m in my business right now, I absolutely love it, because it allows me to make data-driven decisions and allows me to give data driven recommendations, right? I mean if I start to see that somebody’s got great activity but bad outcomes, then I can start to work with him or her on making sure that that activity is actually honed in the right way with the right cadence to the right people with the right messaging, or if I see somebody that has no activity and no outcomes, then it becomes something where the, this the the solution becomes a really easy one to have, and stuff. And also in sales leadership, where we are judged, and our team is judged based on outcomes. It gives me additional data points to, to potentially buy time for maybe a new salesperson, or explain that a new book of business needs a little bit more time to develop before the expectations of outcomes are there. So if I don’t have that data, which now more and more senior leaders and CEOs are way more data driven and rely on the data, it’s not just anecdotes anymore, that, that, that, that those CRM systems are so vitally important to be able to understand how we service our clients but also how we’re getting to the outcomes that we want.
Christopher Smith 34:50
Yep. So when we work with clients, with our CRM clients, you know, getting the frontline people to engage with CRM and make it part of their daily habits can be a struggle at some places, and our recommendation is, you know, lead with a carrot. And I think one of the most successful carrots is giving them a why. You know why this is important to you and the, you know, the organization but it’s really why it’s important to them. ‘Cause sales people it’s really, you know, they need to understand what’s in it for them. What’s your why, you know what’s the sales for, the why for the salespeople at your organization?
Chris Emme 35:31
Yeah, and I like your approach to that and, and, and I do think that rather than just simply telling a salesperson, or beating them into submission in cases like that, if you do give them that carrot and that why, which I think is is really important, I think you’re gonna get the, the activity that you want. We have a limited amount of time. Simply put, and we’re lucky enough that we have an unlimited generally an unlimited amount of prospects. But we have no market awareness whatsoever. So, every rather than playing the spray and pray game, every single outbound communication, every single sales effort that we have, needs to be well thought-out so that we can maximize every minute of our day, because there’s nothing like sending out 250 emails and getting no responses, right? So, the more we track that activity, the more we can we can allocate our time to the activities that generate the best yield. So for us it’s yield management, which is sort of a nerdy way to think about it, but like we have a, we have a finite amount of time, and we have a finite amount of responsibility and outcome expectation. And so we need to generate as much yield out of our time as possible and if you don’t do that in a data-driven way, then you’ll, you’ll spin yourself into frustration and then you, it’s like this vortex where you start doubting your ability, you start doubting your confidence, you just don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just you’re just seeking a “Yes,” in some capacity, and so, you know sales is a beautiful career but it can also be very dark in some cases, though. And I think your, your point is very valid that the “Why” is focused on the areas that’s going to generate you the greatest yield. And if it’s retail clients versus CPG clients versus agencies versus clients. If you understand that through the data, you know it’s a it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of finding joy because you found your niche of clients that for right now are interested in Tsu.
Christopher Smith 37:53
Yeah, that’s awesome. If it’s not working out, do you have, do you have a stick or, you know, another way of getting them to engage with CRM?
Chris Emme 38:04
Yeah you know and the other thing is, is, you know, every, every sales person, obviously, is, is working in their business to hit outcomes that have compensation associated with it. The other thing though is and you know I’ve been on all ends of this, is that a sales person’s career, you’re only as good as your most recent quarter, you’re only as good as your most recent numbers. You always have that number next to you, and that can be that can be great, or that can be a challenge. And every single time you achieve that number, it’s gonna get bigger. Right? And oftentimes we have bad quarters, we have, we face, we face challenges that are out of our control as sales people. Budgets get decreased, the market goes into a slump and everyone cuts their marketing budgets. So, if I can show data to senior leadership and say they’re doing all the right things. They’re just facing circumstances out of their control. I can ultimately buy time. And so, you know, there are two big motivators for sales in general: it’s hope and fear. And so, the hope is, use your time in the most effective way possible to generate the greatest yield per minute, and make a whole bunch of money, and that’s hope. The fear is, do this, so that I can protect your job for another couple quarters, you know.
Christopher Smith 39:31
That’s right. Yeah, that’s, you mentioned something that I think is really important that you know when we work with our CRM clients, that it, it’s very common where people like, “Oh no I only put the deals in that I know we’re gonna close. Those are the only ones that go into CRM.” Because, you know, those have value. But you really miss out on learning from the ones you’re losing. You know, why are we losing? What, you know what are we doing wrong? I read a great article by a gentleman where he at the end of the year he sat down and created a spreadsheet of every deal that he lost and categorized them. And then from there it was able to develop some, identify patterns, and then come up with some strategies when he saw those in the next year to turn those losers into winners. And if you don’t have the data, you can’t do that.
Chris Emme 40:28
Yeah. You’re, you’re working in a void and you’re exactly right, because those that do it well learn from every no more than they probably learn with every yes in a way. Right and, and you know I heard this from a boss as well, too, is that sales starts when you hear “No.” And so it when you hear no but you don’t understand why, or if you hear no, and you go back to your data and say you know what the last time I heard no from a retail client, I said this and it turned it around.
Christopher Smith 41:05
That’s right.
Chris Emme 41:06
Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And if you don’t, if you don’t have that information, then, you almost are, you’re, you’re leaving those nuggets of gold hidden in your desk somewhere, rather than exposed in a CRM.
Christopher Smith 41:20
You bet, you bet. What advice do you have someone who is struggling with their CRM implementation, they’re not getting what they want out of it, what advice do you have for those people?
Chris Emme 41:30
Yeah you know what I mean, oftentimes, and this is just my experience is that there are generally resources at these companies, at the CRM companies and with any software, and I’ve sold software before, is, is generally you know your clients are using your software to 10%, 20%, 30% of the capacity. And so I’ve found a lot of success, and oftentimes a very willing client services person at our partner companies, whether it’s CRM or other companies we rely on for our sales help, to say, “Listen, can you do another tutorial? Can you, can you help me sit down and, and, and understand this, or give a give a once over on to the team?” You know what, as much as everyone says, oh, I’ve got, you know, a forced vendor internal, you know, vendor meeting, everyone gets at least one or two more nuggets of value out of that, and then they can extract. They learned a trick that allows them to extract more, more value out of a CRM. I would say rely on, rely on the client services organizations of your partners who are willing to help you, because they want you to get the most out of it.
Christopher Smith 42:43
That’s right, that’s right. We, we do that all the time. All the time, and a lot of times it’s just trying to show them different ways to be more efficient in their use of the platform, because it’s all about saving time. I need to cram more into my day.
Chris Emme 42:56
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Smith 42:58
Chris, we are out of time. This has been an absolutely terrific conversation, I really appreciate you taking on the time, or taking the time to come on to Sales Lead Dog. If people want to get in touch with you to talk and learn more about Tsu, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Chris Emme 43:14
Yes, so I’m on LinkedIn, as well. My email address is just [email protected]. I’m excited to talk to anyone about it, you know I mean, I you know we’re new enough and we’re kicking off enough that I’m excited to hear from sort of anyone and happy to talk about sales all day long as you can tell.
Christopher Smith 43:39
Yeah, I think you guys are onto so many because a great concept, great idea, and it’s very timely.
Chris Emme 43:43
Yes, I, I hope you’re right, we’re reading the TVs as well too. And we think that the timing is right as well, too.
Christopher Smith 43:51
That’s great. Well thanks again.
Chris Emme 43:53
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Outro
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch the videos on YouTube, and you can also find our episodes on our website at Empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.
Quotes:
- “We face no all the time” (11:33-11:36)
- “Persistence breaks down resistance” (12:42-12:45)
Links:
Tsu Social Website
Chris Emme LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing